Histories

He did it. But team India has not yet done it. Sachin Tendulkar's 50th Test match century was a superb encapsulation of large parts of a 21-year career that continues to defy imagination and belief. If the Sachin Tendulkar history could be written in one innings, this may very well be it.

It had everything - delicate shots, powerful shots, the trademark gentle Tendulkar pushes that somehow seemed to acquire a momentum of their own and raced to the boundary, and a challenging situation with the world's best bowler bowling on home ground. And finally, it also had the effect of once again relegating to the background a most significant landmark, achieved by a batsman who would have possibly been hailed the greatest his country had seen, were it not for the fact that his career overlapped perfectly with Sachin Tendulkar.

That Rahul Dravid got to 12,000 Test runs is a fact that should have been headline news, were it not for Tendulkar achieving the even more monumental figure of 50 Test tons. That is one of the incidental costs Dravid has had to pay for playing in the same team and at the same time as the greatest batsman of the modern generation. And just as the Tendulkar history was encapsulated, so too was Dravid's - which has been inextricably intertwined with Tendulkar's. Thus it had to be that when Dravid scaled a summit, Tendulkar scaled an even higher one.

However, where Dravid reached the 12000 summit and fell, Tendulkar is still standing and while it hasn't always been like that in their careers, it had to be so today. After all, if this Tendulkar innings was going to mirror his career, it had to have the quality of being the best that was to be seen on the ground on the day.

The number 50 is a slightly unreal one, in that people might come to appreciate it more fully five or ten years down the line, when Tendulkar will have ceased to don the whites for India and world cricket will be witness to just how difficult it is to get to 30 Test centuries, let alone 50.

There is one part of his career though, that Tendulkar will not want condensed into the story of this innings. Too often in the past, he has scored mountains of runs, only to see the rest of the team fritter it away. India are still trailing in the Test by 30 runs, and with only Sreesanth and Unadkat left for company, defeat is still the most likely outcome. Unless of course the weather intervenes.

That India have managed to fight back and take this Test into a fifth day at all, is being looked at as a sort of statement, but the fierce competitor that Tendulkar is, a 'statement' that still sees India ending up on the losing side will not hold much value for him. Apart from having the instinct to abhor defeat that is the preserve of winners, Tendulkar is also a consummate team-man.

Fifty is just a number after all, and wouldn't even have been that special if human beings didn't use the decimal system to count. But even as just a number, Test Century No.50 will hold enormously more value for Sachin Tendulkar if it helps prevent defeat for team India.

Tailpiece: In a wider context, the innings fitted the history of Tendulkar on the world stage too, not just on the Indian stage. After Day 3, it had seemed that this Test was set to be all about Jacques Kallis getting to a very elusive, but very much deserved double hundred. Both Kallis and Dravid belong to an exclusive club of five along with Tendulkar - Lara and Ponting are the others - of being the only men with over 10,000 runs in both Tests and ODIs. Lara has retired, while Ponting is nursing a finger that could be broken and form that definitely is. Kallis scored his fastest Test century and first double hundred, while Dravid overtook Lara's runs tally in the match on the way to touching 12,000. Thus while two of the stalwarts were not in the running, the other two had significant achievements. And yet, Sachin Tendulkar outshone them all. As he has done throughout his career.